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A sober thought post-US 2012 election

November 7, 2012 — xanthippa

This is a comment I left at another blog which discussed the Obama-win/Romney-losss. I guess you could call it my sober thought post US-2012 election….

I suspect the problem is deeper than that – it’s in the ‘bundling of ideas’ that necessarily get thrown together to cater to the core movements/segments within the two major parties: the ‘progressives’ have a more ‘coherent’ or, perhaps, ‘internally consistent’ idea of what they stand for, so the individual differences between the different sub-groups that the Democrats draw on for support are much smaler and their differences are easier to bridge than that of the Republicans.

Just consider the gulf of difference between, say, a fiscally conservative, small-government (stay out of our bedrooms and boardrooms – and pharmacies) atheist – and the evangelical social conservatives who have no problem with huge, inefficient governments as long as they legislate their brand of morality and impose it on the whole of US society!

And that is just one of the many ways the ‘conservative’ or ‘right-of-centre’ support base can be divided up into mutually exclusive enclaves…

It is quite impossible to field a candidate that would appeal to both of these ‘polarized’ groups and no way to build an election platform that would not seriously alienate a significant percentage of their voter support: to the point that the alienated groups will simply not show up to vote for the ‘wrong’ kind of ‘conservatism’!

I don’t know that there is a workable solution for this, but, in-my-never-humble-opinion, that does not mean that this problem is not at the core of the GOP’s current difficulties.

P.S. – perhaps this difficulty could have been sufficiently minimized in 2012 to gain him the win if Romney had selected either Thomas Sowell or Rand Paul or a prominent atheist of the calibre of the late Christopher Hitchens (each being a bridge to a different group alienated by Romney)…

Thoughts?

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8 Responses to “A sober thought post-US 2012 election”

Yeah ultimately romney both appealed the fundamnetalist right and then blurred the differences between him and the president to win the independent vote. So he was neither for economic liberty nor social liberty.

Why would someone pro freedom like me support obama? Because his administration has created so much controversy that it is getting people to examine their most dogmatic beliefs. One of the most pro libertarian people i know said they hoped obama would win because people are actually angry about the government. He wouldnt vote for obama since it was against his principles but i dont believe in moral duties anyway. As opposed to republican rule overr the previous thirty years that employed equally leftist policies that nobody ever questioned. Anger and division freed the slaves. Compromise and unity only delays freedom.

Nobody examined anything the previous 30 years. Now the people are thinking. I wouldnt trade thst for a romney administration or anything really…

I like rand paul as hes a little more sane than his dad. I doubt sowell would ever want to subject himself to the controversy or responsibilites of the presidency though hes a great thinker. I suspect my governor chris christie will run for 2016 and he could get my support.

Xanthippa says:

In other words, you voted in a way to seal a suicide pact.

Don’t be surprised, then, when you wake up one morning and are forced to face the consequences!

It’s unfortunate that you are willing to reject the dogmas of cultural marxism, socialism, and the church (as well as a host of other flawed philosophies), but only such as an tribute and offering to the equally dangerous and flawed religion of deontology.

Xanthippa says:

When a person becomes a grown-up, other people depend on them. That is because we do not live in a vacuum, but in a society – having evolved as social creatures.

Not pulling your weight in society not because you are disabled and unable, but because you are too infantile to realize it is in your own individual self-interest to, is anti-human.

This is (partly) where the anti-human-ness (if you’ll pardon the expression) of moral relativists is rooted.

It blossoms in the blatantly anti-human policies of the ‘progressives’, so obvilous to those willing to think through the consequences of their actions.

I’m not a moral relativist. I’m an amoralist, one who values both freedom and compassion in a personal sense, but never asserts to be a moral authority in the universal sense.

Helping others (as contentious as its implications are) is a valuable asset to society, but deontological moral duties in themselves are inconsistent, incorrect and ironically set bad precedents themselves.

Xanthippa says:

I don’t mean to sound unkind, but a society of amoralists would be unable to function because it would be impossible to establish any governance structures.

because actions speak louder than words. people will be able to judge by actions, regardless of my intentions. i hold strong moral duties to myself, and i put myself on a high standard to behave in the most compassionate way possible. however, i don’t believe that the moral duties i impose on myself is objective. or that other people are objectively right or wrong for following or not following the standards i individually place on myself.

Many people, who would embrace the small-government, individual-rights, balanced-budget, common sense aspects of the conservative platform are not only terrified of the morally-constipated, holier-than-thou, bible-thumping religious zealots, but also horrified by the damn-those-gooks, war-for-profit fat-cats of the military industrial complex.

By forcing these groups into an awkward alliance and indiscriminately mislabelling them all collectively as “the right,” the Democrats have been able to overshadow the common sense of the true right, and convince large segments of the public that a vote for the Republicans is a vote for intolerance, oppression and war.

This is exacerbated by the fact that cultural Marxist indoctrination is everywhere. It has denigrated all of the strong, benevolent archetypes that people traditionally depended on for reassurance, safety, and security — God, father, and husband. But the deep psychological needs that gave rise to these archetypes in the first place are as compelling as ever, so people are only left with one place to turn to — the state.

The difficulty is that the average person doesn’t have the time or the inclination to really think through the issues. Therefore, a strong belief in God is one of the few things that enable many people to resist cultural Marxism’s gradual but relentless erosion of common sense, common decency, maturity, and self-reliance.

This is why the awkward alliance exists. Those who think independently are too few to stand against the indoctrinated majority alone. The result is and attempt to pit the two branches of the indoctrinated majority — secular Edenists and fundamentalist Christians — against each other.

And this is what has lead us to the spectacle we see today: the Republican party represents a sort of religious national socialism (a paradigm of the left) not unlike Nazi Germany of the 1930’s, while the Democratic party represents a sort of state-capitalistic collectivism (a paradigm of the farther left), not unlike present-day Communist China.

As a result, those of the true right — who want a small, non-invasive, financially prudent government that protects the rights of the individual and the freedom of the market — are left without a voice.

Rightists claim that leftists are fundamentally incapable of reasoning from cause to effect, if the outcome doesn’t please them. Interestingly, leftists accuse rightists of the same thing. The real truth seems to be that the two groups just think differently. In particular, it has to do with left-brain dominance versus right-brain dominance. Right-wingers are left-brain dominant and vice versa.

Interestingly, this is consistent with the way the nervous system is wired: the left side of the brain controls the right side of the body, and vice versa. It’s also consistent with how the two sides of the brain operate. The left side of the brain is concerned primarily with symbolic processing, language, reasoning and the sense of being an individual. The right side of the brain is concerned with holistic processing, imagery, intuition and the sense of being one with the world.

As we mature, the left brain gradually assumes an increasingly dominant role. The thing is, modern cultural-Marxist-controlled schooling does a very good job of preventing this from happening; instead, it arrests mental development and turns out a population of narcissistic adult children. Paradoxically, the primacy of self is heightened in right-brain dominant thinking. The childish world view is not only “I am part of the world” but “the world is part of me.” It’s not far from there to “the world exists to serve me.”

And this is what we find in the world view of the left-winger. The leftist wants the rightist to be more concerned with the world than with his own family, because the leftist understands that he is not part of the rightist’s family, but he feels himself to be part of the world and the world exists to serve him. This is patently muddled and inconsistent from the rational point of view of a left-brained right-winger, but it resonates pleasingly with the intuitional perspective of a right-brained leftist.

Now, we must remember that almost everyone uses both sides of their brain, but they use them to different degrees, so one side or the other dominates. You could say that left-brain dominant people have feelings about what they think, and right-brain dominant people have thoughts about what they feel.

In summary, it seems that the majority of people want a small, accountable, financially prudent government that respects individual rights and freedoms, but not if it comes bundled with intolerance, oppression and war.

So this is the bundling we must undo.

And to do that we must ask ourselves, how can we frame our message of classical liberalism, based on natural intrinsic morality and inalienable individual rights, in a way that will be comprehensible and compelling to these chronically right-brained left-wingers from both sides of the conservative / progressive divide?

Xanthippa:

AH, now, that is indeed the question, CodeSlinger!

If I – or anyone else – knew the answer to that, this world would already be a better place!

Actually, I attended a conference a few years ago held precisely to answer this question. There were a lot of leading small ‘c’ conservative thinkers and quite a few little ‘l’ libertarians – and also a strong showing from bible-thumers and bigots.

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